


Don't Run Into a Burning Building; That's How Stan Rogers Died

by orphan_account



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:33:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonathan Toews tries not to die of smoke inhalation during the four craziest months of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Run Into a Burning Building; That's How Stan Rogers Died

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antumbral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antumbral/gifts).



> A little something extra for Antumbral to combat the pinch-hit woes. I don't usually ship 'hawks with 'hawks, but your prompt inspired me. Hope you enjoy.

 

 _Febuary 2010_

For about a minute, Jon worries that it’s going to be awkward. He’s slipping in and out of a shallow doze on a truly uncomfortable airport couch in Denver, waiting for Patrick to show up so they all can board the connecting charter home when he starts awake with a sharp fear that Patrick’s going to be mad at him. That things are going to be different and weird and the easy movement will be all tense and fractured and somebody will stop scoring or get hurt or flame out. Suddenly the medal under his shirt feels slimy and vaguely poisonous.

He sits up swiftly, knocking his bag onto the floor, getting an annoyed grunt from Duncs, who’s face down on the couch across from him.

Patrick would laugh at him, sharp and the slightest bit cruel, if he knew what Jon was thinking.

“Lighten up, man,” he’d say, and steal Jon’s hat, the remote, a lumpy airplane pillow.

But Jon gets paid to worry like this, to take the game with as much gravitas as it deserves, and Patrick’s face last night as they lined up to shake hands, sweat-soaked and tired, had an unsettling darkness. He’d paid no attention at the time; it was all euphoria and Sid’s wide grin and planning the party after, but now…

He’s hungover, and everything looks worse when you’re hungover.

Sid was floating even before they started drinking last night, sixteen feet off the ground and reaching down every once in a while to try to pull Jon up there with him. They were never more than a foot apart, contact at an elbow, or a shoulder, and Jon thought of dances at St. Mary’s and “Leave some room for Jesus”, and smothered a chuckle. Sid kept passing him drinks, something pink and fruity followed by a small clear shot followed by a variety of drinks that must’ve been either inherently forgettable or massively alcoholic, and he kept drinking them, because every time he did, Sid would bounce on the balls of his feet slightly and grin even wider, straight into Jon’s eyes.

‘Well fuck, Jonny,” he’d said after a while, “I thought for sure that this would get you talking.”

Usually, it would. Usually, the second drink hits him and he starts weeping and gushing about how beautiful everything is, but Jon was petrified. Somehow he’d sewn his mouth shut with half-lucid fear. Behind all the tilting drunkenness was an imperative, “Don’t say anything, or else you’ll say everything.”

So Jon had grinned at him, tight-lipped and with secrets in his eyes, and Sid had growled a little and slurred into Jon’s ear.

“I watch you. I…was watching you,”

Had thrown an arm around Jon’s neck that stayed there until they’d passed out.

Jon hears Patrick before he sees him, yelling at his cell phone, the last snatch of a conversation.

“I swear to God, Jaclyn, if I see that punk around, my foot’s going up his ass.”

Patrick’s hunched over, shoulders up around his ears like Nixon, looking creased and slept-in. Duncan lets out a muffled, but clearly beleaguered moan.

“Yeah,” Patrick continues, a little softer, “In a couple weeks. I‘ll be there.”

A pause.

“No. Fuck him.”

He pokes at his phone and violently shoves it into a pocket of his parka, finally turning to see Jon watching him.

“And fuck you too!” he says.

So, okay, his grin is a lot dimmer than usual, but when he collapses next to Jon on the couch and nudges him with an elbow, Jon feels his sudden anxiety start to seep away.

“My sister’s goddamn boyfriend,” Patrick says darkly, “This little basketball punk.”

Patrick’s decided for them, then. This isn’t even going to begin to be a thing. They aren’t ever going to mention it, unless it’s in some jokey pissing contest for the press when Patrick’s had enough time to get over it.

Jon smiles. Patrick left home when he was fourteen to spend life on the road playing hockey. Sometimes this is a bad thing, but occasionally Patrick and his arrested state are just what Jon needs.

Patrick puts his head down on Jon’s shoulder and Jon shrugs him off

“Fucker,” Patrick says companionably.

 

 _March 2010_

At 16, Jon was pretty much done with Jesus and the whole South Manitoba Mennonite package, with the oldest ladies still wearing lace head-coverings and the girl cousins who still rendered lard by hand and the inexplicable urge to name babies things like Lavinia.

His mother had never really gelled with the rules and restrictions and she was entirely too French, so it was easy enough for Jon to divorce the whole thing, to cut it out like a tumor with a hymnody and focus on the present, the real, what was actually happening right at this very minute.

Not like Dave, who had been so afraid of hell when they were small, who used to do so much guilty praying and so much church-going. It had taken him years.

Nevertheless, Jon can’t shake the feeling that, Jesus or no Jesus, things like Truth and Duty and Honor and all of those capitalized words, endlessly preached, kind of matter. Are important anyway.

So one of these nights, in one of these hotels, when Jon lays a little shoulder on him, just barely a nudge, and Patrick pushes and pushes and pushes back until they‘re flat out wrestling on the floor. When Patrick, through sheer Patrickery, decides to sink his teeth into Jon’s shoulder and hold on, making a huge damp spot in his t-shirt, Jon decides to admit it: he is unbearably turned on and terrified and that’s _two_ , now.

He decides, instead of ignoring it, and shutting his mouth, and doing his damnedest to pretend it never happened, to call Dave and say “Uh…” until Dave pulls the whole thing out of him, syllable by syllable.

“ _Ainsi va la vie_ ,” says Dave, and Jon agrees, but wishes that it didn’t.

 

 _April 2010_

Okay, so maybe Versteeg takes it a little too far with the jokes about Sid being a fairy princess drama queen who needed somebody like Jon around to be his bitch, get the scoring started and make him look good, but it’s hardly the kind of talk that necessitates Patrick hauling off and sucker-punching him.

Steeger doubles over and Dustin has Patrick pinned against the wall in seconds, and Sharpie is getting his mom face on, ready to talk some sense, and Patrick looks _feral_. He’s silent, but completely out of control, like some crazy-flammable chemical igniting, and it takes all of Dustin’s considerable weight and height to keep him from flaming out everywhere

“The _fuck_ , Kane!?” Dustin says straight into his face, catching a flailing fist and flattening it back to the wall.

It takes a couple solid minutes to calm him down. Everyone but Dustin and Jon have cleared out, back to their rooms, and the two of them are standing, flanking Patrick with folded arms and disapproving looks. He takes no notice of them, just pushes away up the stairs as soon as his breathing returns to normal, and Dustin gives that disbelieving little laugh that is sometimes the only proper response to Patrick’s bullshit, and asks Jon if he wants to go get a drink or something.

Patrick’s asleep when Jon gets back to the room, and gone when he wakes up. He catches up with him in an empty hallway leading out of the hotel ballroom.

“Kaner!” he calls out, and Patrick whirls around, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket.

“Yeah?”

He looks light-years better than he did the night before, but still, something’s off. He’s got that bitter homesick look that one of Jon’s college teammates had. The kid lasted two months before he went back to Newfoundland.

Jon takes a deep breath and said, “Look, if there’s something you need to talk about. I mean, if there’s something bothering you that…”

Kane stands hunched, head ducked a little, and looks up at him wearily.

“I know,” Jon says, “But something’s wrong and this is my job.”

Patrick clenches his jaw, and laughs, but it’s dry and hollow.

“You know what’s bothering me, Captain,” he spits, “You know exactly. I don’t want to talk about it, and it hasn’t been affecting my performance, so just let it go.”

Jon kicks at the carpet.

“I don’t, though.” he says.

“Tell me,” he says.

Patrick’s fists are clenched, and he’s tense and ready, but his face isn‘t spoiling for the fight his body plans on. He just looks a little confused.

“Really?”

“Really!” Jon barks out, relieved, “Jesus, man. What’s wrong?”

Then Patrick is a flash of blue, and he’s right in Jon’s face with a fistful of his shirt, and his eyes are very dark.

“Did you fuck Sid?”

“What?!”

It hits Jon like a two-by-four, and the room starts to kind of come together, and Jon can feel the adrenaline rush in his toes. This cannot be good.

“Did you?“ Patrick says, very quiet.

For a minute Jon can’t remember how to make words. It’s like having the wind knocked out of him, except in the linguistic word-type centers. Something enormous is coming.

Patrick’s still staring him down, and their noses are almost close enough to touch, and Jon breathes.

“No.”

Patrick lets go of him, and kind of pivots back to the wall and sags against it. His eyes are avoiding Jon’s, staring at the floor, and for the first time since Jon’s met him, he looks ashamed.

Patrick huffs a laugh, “Well…” he starts, and then stops again.

Jon considers just leaving, turning around and sprinting for the door and never mentioning this ever again. But things like the Truth are still important. So Jon reaches out a shaky hand, and rather awkwardly bumps a loose fist against his arm.

“But,” he says, hoarse, “I wanted to.”

Kane tenses, but when he finally looks up, a grin is pasted on, sleazy and squirrelly and only half-full of the usual dose of Patrickery, and he clomps away, trying hard, but lead-footed, wearing into the nebulous carpet.

 

 _May 2010_

“You’re a little bit fucked up,” Jon had said, mid-October of their first season together, and Patrick had hooted and kicked at him, and gone back to the girl-on-girl porno he was watching on his phone.

Jon stands by this assessment. Patrick is fast and fucked up and messy and in great danger of losing structural integrity and collapsing on top of all of them.

But there are two days until the first of the San Jose series, and Vancouver had nothing on them, and Jon’s always been best at dealing with the present, with what is actually happening right at this very minute. So, well.

Coach keeps ordering them to sleep, but it’s never easy. Patrick’s bouncing around yet another of the interminable string of classy hotel rooms, but he won’t meet Jon’s eyes. They only talk logistics these days, a stilted weirdness that has never been there before. He picks up a sweatshirt and flings it over a chair, shoves all the pillows on his bed off onto the floor, plugs his phone in, unplugs it and pokes at it.

Jon’s up before he even realizes he’s made a decision, but he goes over to where Patrick is practically vibrating by the bedside table and locks a hand around the side of Patrick’s neck, rough and friendly.

He’s a mess. They all are. Unshaven and bruised and trying hard not to think about how long exactly 49 years are. His skin is still a little damp from the shower and radiating heat and the blunt edges of Jon’s fingernails are scraping lightly and raising goosebumps.

Jon breathes a tiny laugh.

“ _Stop_ ,” he says.

Then, because Patrick’s eyes widen and he looks so surprised and so damn goofy, Jon kisses him, hard.

It’s good, surprisingly good, for a few seconds and then Patrick’s shaking him off, pushing him away and letting out a litany of confused half sentences and curses.

“You don’t--you can’t--shit!”

He shoves and bounces a little, punchy as fuck.

“Why can’t you just leave it?”

Jon still hasn’t worked that one out, so he just says, “I don’t know.”

All air pushed out of him as Patrick grabs his shoulders and slams him against the wall, making jerky abortive thrusts with his chest, hips, and he looks so frustrated that Jon almost laughs, but instead just touches their foreheads lightly together.

“Hey, now,” Jon says, and bites gently at his mouth.

Suddenly they are both laughing and kissing, hard painful clashes that taste kind of like well water, and Patrick is shoving his hands under Jon’s shirt and pulling him closer, pulling at his back and shoulders, mouth open on his neck, choking a little on nasty patches of beard. Jon’s running his own hands all over, stringy muscle and baby fat and preposterous hair, and Patrick will insist on wearing that cologne that smells like somebody’s greasy owns-an-adult-video-store uncle, but Jon pushes past it, and buries his face in the searing heat of his skin.

Patrick is the first to start flailing toward the bed, and Jon’s grateful, because his muscles are still groaning from the long haul that is May of the Finals, despite all the rest. They fall, finally, to the twist of goosedown or whatever, and Patrick gets his hands in Jon’s pants and starts ridiculously humping his leg, and then Jon flips them both, tugging sweatpants down and grabbing for whoever’s cock he can reach and stretching out completely. Pressing down, moving up. Patrick’s muttering curses and nonsense and clutching at Jon’s ass and coming all over both of them, and Jon sinks his teeth deep into Patrick's shoulder and goes very very still.

“So,” says Patrick, when they both come to. His limbs are tangled everywhere, taking up way too much of the bed, and the full grin is back in place. “You’re going to blow me next time, right?”

Jon rolls his eyes and scoffs, but there’s that “next time”. Something strange in his stomach wakes and moves, but he puts it away like he puts away the thought of the next game, and the possible thirteen after that, and nips at the closest of Patrick’s sprawled fingers, holds it gently between his teeth.

“Oh well, you know, uh,” Patrick says, affecting his Jon Speaking to the Press voice, “we’re just going to try to keep our game and just go out there and just, uh, play one game at a time, and, you know, keep skating, keep scoring, and, uh, do our best.”

Jon curls his tongue slow around the finger, sucking it deeper into his mouth, and a shiver passes through every inch of the furnace of Patrick’s skin.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Patrick breathes.

Jon nods.


End file.
